Hoffman drug sales debated

Grand jurors: Police say she sold at least $35K of pot a week

Aug. 5, 2008

Rachel Hoffman

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DEMOCRAT SENIOR WRITER

Rachel Hoffman was portrayed by friends as a fairly low-level pot dealer who mainly sold to college students to support her own habit.

But grand jurors, who last week deemed Tallahassee police negligent in the confidential informant's death in May, reported that police said Hoffman told them she was selling 10 to 15 pounds of marijuana a week out of her Tallahassee apartment.

The idea that Hoffman was selling such a staggering amount of pot — at least $35,000 a week by Drug Enforcement Administration estimates — was met with skepticism by her family's attorney and experts.

"Her friends have all told me the most they ever saw was a pound," said attorney Lance Block, who is representing Hoffman's parents. "That's an unfathomable amount ... I just find that very hard to believe."

Police spokesman David McCranie said he could not comment because of a court order barring law enforcement officials from discussing the case.

When Hoffman's apartment was raided by police in April, a probable-cause statement said they found about 5 ounces of pot, a ledger used to record drug transactions and a digital scale. They make no note of any large sum of cash.

It was at that time Hoffman was recruited to become a confidential informant.

"This makes no sense. She would have been a major dealer," said Fred Shenkman, emeritus professor of criminology at the University of Florida. "They wouldn't have treated her the way they treated her ... This is a real incongruity."

Shenkman said it would be almost impossible for her friends and family not to notice if Hoffman was selling up to 15 pounds of pot a week.

"Unless she is the most stoic, disciplined hippie ever," he said.

In Tallahassee, a pound of marijuana goes for between $3,500 and $4,000, according to conservative estimates by the DEA, McCranie said.

Block plans to request the 23-year-old's bank records, but said Irv Hoffman paid for everything for his daughter, including her car, apartment and cell phone. He even sent Publix gift cards for groceries.

"He spoiled her rotten," Block said. "Between the two of them (her father and mother Margie Weiss), they were paying for everything."

Rachel Hoffman had stagnated in Tallahassee, Block said, and was biding her time, waiting to be through with her court-ordered drug program so she could leave town and go on to culinary school.

Block said the scale of her pot-selling is a side issue.

"I don't have any way to prove or disprove that she was selling that much marijuana," Block said.

But he questions the credibility of Tallahassee police.

"I don't trust anything these guys say," he added.

In February 2007, Hoffman was stopped for speeding and was arrested for having about 25 grams of pot stashed in a glass mason jar. For Hoffman to go from that to moving tens of thousands of dollars a week seems implausible, Shenkman said.

"Anything is possible, but it is extraordinarily atypical," he said. "The only person who really knows is dead."